senate passes a bill to avert the fiscal cliff. as the president wrapped up his vacation, federal workers trickled back into the nation's capital. but the only people who can avert the fiscal cliff, members of the house and senate, have not returned, and, in just six days, a 2% payroll tax is set to expire, along with the bush era tax cuts, shrinking the average workers' paycheck in 2013 by about $1,500. long-term unemployment benefits for about two million jobless americans are also set to expire, and $110 billion worth of spending cuts to both domestic and defense programs will start to kick in, forcing layoffs in the public sector and for some private sector government contractors. economists predict that if congress doesn't act, all those cuts and new taxes will push the economy back into a mild recession by mid-2013. the impact of some of these cuts and taxes would not be felt immediately on january 1. that's because the i.r.s. and other agencies didn't expect it to come to this, and so it will take a few weeks for workers to